


Fire My Imagination

by meat



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Amputation, Angst and Humor, Blood and Violence, Character(s) of Color, Disabled Character, Dystopia, Human names (sort of), Native American Character(s), Post-Apocalypse, Post-War, Prosthesis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 15:57:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17409863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meat/pseuds/meat
Summary: The apocalypse has come and gone, and what's left of society is scraping along with hardly a hitch. It's a boring sort of normal.For a certain group of nomads, 'normal' just isn't good enough.





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To quote a long-forgotten cult spectacle-  
> “Here we are in the brink of the apocalypse, the eve of destruction, so to speak... and I can't think of anything to do.”

Sirens blared across the barren field, drowning out the thunderous slam of the car door. The radio crackled on as the key was turned, and then with another slam to its console, it sluggishly fizzled back off; the sound of a jammed tape deck signaled that this was likely the last time that it would _ever_ be turned off, but it wasn’t like he would ever need to use it again, anyways. It was barely a mile, and then he was free. He was out. He was _safe_ , and he’d never have to return to this godforsaken hellhole again.

“No, hey- come on!”

The car’s engine gave out with a mighty roar and a plume of smoke, and he was forced to leap out of the car just as quickly as he had jumped into it. Running a mile in- fuck, he didn’t even have time to check his watch- might not have been humanly possible, but he was about to put that to the test. The sirens were salt in his growing wound as he ran for his life.

A final warning blared out across the field. He stopped in his tracks to stare back at it, at the nothingness where it had emanated from- and, in realizing just how stupid he must have looked, he kept running. He wasn’t going to make it, but that was no reason to just give up. There had to be something, _anything_ he could do to prevent himself from becoming a smear on the ground. The sirens had stopped, and he knew that, back at the row of buildings where he had run from, his colleagues all believed themselves to be safe behind their hopelessly flimsy defenses. In less than a minute’s time, the greatest lie never told was about to unfold- and the weight would be sitting entirely on his shoulders.

Before anything else, what hit him first was the approach of the bomber plane about to bathe them all in hellfire. He didn’t bother to look up, not this time, not again. He wasn’t even sure where he was running to, or what he was running _from_ \- his fate was sealed.

“I’m _so_ sorry.”

Tailgate spoke mostly to himself as he ducked into a break in a row of desert rocks. He was small enough that he could just barely shimmy inside, and his feet were just scarcely inside of the cave when a deafening _heat_ \- not even a noise, but a **_feeling_ **\- broke out behind him.

The melted remains of a curly straw in Tailgate's front pocket were all of the proof that was left of his mistake. It was a fittingly shameful end to an embarrassing chapter in humanity, for such a small, insignificant item to cause millions, if not  _billions_ of lives to be lost in the ensuing chaos of the disastrously failed test. The eagle eyes of the government had assumed that the catastrophic failure at the test site (and its spillover destruction of the entire city of White Sands, New Mexico) was a foreign sabotage, rather than the domestic mistake of one slightly childish explosives technician; the actions that followed not only served as a big, red, swollen middle finger to the rest of the world, but to the United States, themselves, as they, too, were not immune to the imminent collapse of civilization. It was the end of one chapter, but the beginning of another one, written in rat's blood and sewage on the charred remains of a rads-soaked official government letterhead.


	2. Chapter 1

At a smidgen over 35 years old, “Rod” had more than most of his childhood friends could have ever dreamed of. He had a house, albeit shared with 15 others (and, of course, underground); he had a car, though it was missing most of its constituent parts; and, most importantly, he had a reputation- and one that wasn’t entirely awful. Well, perhaps the most important thing was that he still had his  _ life _ \- something that none of his childhood friends were around to share.

Goldenrod was, believe it or not, his pre-war, god-given name. He didn’t need a name to define his ‘cool factor’- no, he cemented that with his style and actions, more than anything else- but if he was given the chance to choose, he definitely would have gone for something with a bit more flash. ‘ _ Hot Rod _ ’ was a nickname that he’d tried out, and ‘ _ Rodion _ ’ after he had gotten ahold of some old Balkan books, but neither had stuck- nor had Falcon, Slash, Prowl, or Jesus 2 (though that last one had been a joke from the start). His teenage years of changing his name whenever it suited him were long behind him, and these days, Rod was the way to go.

Despite the plain name, gaudiness dominated Rod’s life. Ripped leather jackets patched together from salvaged scraps were pieced with similarly-salvaged pants, both usually decorated with a healthy amount of paint and metal studs. He wore his naturally auburn hair in a shock-red mullet, though his hairline tended to lose dye the fastest, often taking on a yellow-orange tint; he never bothered to bleach his eyebrows, having learned  _ that _ lesson the hard way.

“Out of the fucking shower, already!”

Rod smiled. Gold-capped teeth battled for space in his mouth, surrounded at all corners by both missing spaces and rapidly yellowing dentition. His mouth was just another casualty to his conduct of eating, drinking, and  _ living _ hard. Though the flashier bits did get him plenty of attention, they were unrelated to his name- not like a baby would have had golden teeth, anyways, but people in the post-war world tended not to be the smartest.

‘Goldenrod’- the state flower of his native Nebraska. Now, he struggled to find many people who were familiar with what either a state or a flower even  _ were _ . It was, like the rest of him, a relic of a forgotten world, a reminder of-

“ _ GOD DAMNIT, ROD! _ ” Fists pounded on the shower door hard enough to dent it. “I’VE GOT FUCKING FLEAS TO WASH OFF!”

“I’m coming out, hold on!”

He stopped flashing his smile in the scratched mirror of the shower stall, reaching up to turn off the tap. He wrapped himself with a towel before stepping out, and grabbed his clothes from the compartment in the wall- he would have to get dressed outside, before Dipstick broke down the door. Sure enough, Rod barely dodged a fist as he exited the shower, and Dipstick pushed right past him into the now-open stall. Rod flashed another smile behind him as he strolled away. Life in an underground shelter could be crazy, but it was what it was.

The rest of the floor was, thankfully, deserted, and Rod was able to get dressed in peace. The shelter was split into three floors, without walls to separate anything save for the space between the hatch and the upper floor. The first and ‘main’ floor was the backbone of the entire bunker, though not much actually happened there, save for radio communications and construction projects; the second floor was more varied, a mix of storage space, planters, water jugs, and generators; and the third floor, which Rod currently found himself standing on, was the real hub of life for the place, with virtually every other function of daily life occuring there.

Rod flipped open one of the meat lockers at the end of the hallway, making sure to do his due diligence and mark down exactly how much he took- ok, no, he didn’t do that. Rod looked behind him and to both of his sides before taking out an extra slab of meat, then carrying both to the stove with as much urgency as he could manage. There was enough in their stockpile to justify taking a bit extra for himself, especially since it wasn’t coming at a cost to anyone  _ but _ himself.

Above him, the intercom buzzed to life, and Rod jolted.

“Rod, we need you upstairs.”

Fuck. They didn’t have cameras down here- no, that would have been too much of a drain on their generator, even if they were sitting on a massive stockpile of petrol- so Rod had to blame it on Prowl’s supernatural ability to tell when he was getting himself into trouble. He set the stove to a simmer, figuring that Dipstick would be back out soon enough to turn off the stove for him if he took too long to get back downstairs.

The intercom buzzed again before Rod could even climb up the ladder to the next floor, and it took all of his strength not to yell out, ‘I’m coming, mom!’. He doubted that half of the shelter would get the reference, and Prowl was such a hard ass, he doubted that even he would, either. Again, the same message was repeated with slightly more urgency, right as Rod finished climbing the ladder to the top floor.

“Hold your horses, I’m here, alright?” Rod posed, as Prowl spun around in his chair to show off a scowl. “ _ Fashionably late _ , as always.”

Rod leaned against the wooden table that housed their radio communications equipment, and Prowl scooted away from him. He let his scowl relax a bit, one hand going to rub at his temples, before he spoke again,

“Amity and Rust haven’t answered any of their radio communications in three days. Dipstick said that  _ you _ were the last one to answer a call from them,  **_four days_ ** ago. Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

Oh, shit. Rod drooped, his natural smile fading. Dipstick was always in a bad mood, but had it really been because of that…? Regular scouting crews from their shelter explored the hopefully-abandoned buildings of the wastes as often as their resources would allow it, scavenging for anything useful, but they usually had the firepower to fight back against anyone- or  _ anything _ , for that matter- out there that would pick a fight with them. It had become rare to actually lose anyone, especially so suddenly.

“I...I didn’t know they were missing. I thought it was just any other call.”

“What did they say?”

Prowl spat back at Rod with such a force that he could practically feel the spittle hitting him. Ew.

“ _ Eugh _ \- They just asked how our water supplies were doing, and I said they were great, which they are,” Rod paused, thinking back to his extra long shower. “They didn’t sound worried, or anything. And then they hung up.”

Evidently, that hadn’t been good enough for Prowl, but he seemed not to have decided just  _ how _ insufficient Rod’s answer was. He scoffed into his hand, then leaned back in his chair. He managed to be intimidating despite not being much to physically look at, projecting his attitude through a barely-5’3 body. Few words described him as well as ‘cherubic’, with a large gut to match the flab that covered up most of his angular cheeks. Really, the man was an enigma, between how he managed to stay fat during a global food shortage, how he managed to stay relatively well-groomed, and how he managed to achieve both without spilling any of his secrets.

Prowl didn’t sleep in the communal bunk beds with everyone else, instead choosing to either nap directly at his workstation, or to sleep on a pallet by the storage. He kept all of his personal belongings, there, too, and though Rod had managed to catch a passing glance of him threading a comb through his raven-black hair, that was as much personal grooming as Rod had ever seen him practice. It was like his natural state was just ‘fat, pretentious twat’.

“You can go.”

“Uh-uh, what’s the catch? You’ve got that look in your eye like I’m in trouble. I  _ know _ that look.”

Rod was telling the truth. Alongside Prowl’s supernatural ability to tell when Rod had fucked up, Rod had developed an equally supernatural ability to tell when he was fucked- specifically, when Prowl was about to punish him. Prowl shrugged his shoulders, then leaned back further in his chair with an audible crack. He didn’t flinch, nor did he make eye contact; his face was blank.

“You were still recovering when they left. You couldn’t have tampered with this mission at all, even if you had been given prior warning. You can go, Goldenrod.”

This time, it was Rod’s turn to scowl. He knew what Prowl was doing: trying to get beneath his skin however he could, ultimately trying to elicit some truth from Rod that he was withholding. This time, like many times before, he really didn’t know anything more about the situation.

“That is  _ not _ my name, and you know it.”

“Of course I do.”

There was a deliberately tense silence, before the space was filled with the crackle of Prowl’s radio equipment coming to life again. The frequency on the front of the monitor wasn’t right to have been from the missing party, but Rod still recognized it- it was a call from Drift. Prowl hesitated, before picking it up.

“Cyber-30, come in, over.”

“Go ahead, over.”

Prowl looked over his shoulder at Rod, still fuming. Rod felt not entirely unlike a child watching his mother on the phone with the school principal, after he had come home with a note for detention- a concept that was, again, a relic of a different time.

“Can I get a radio check? I’m having some issues on my end, over.”

Intentionally or not, Drift had a weird way of putting things into perspective for Rod. Even under the oppressive thumb of Prowl, Rod still lived a life of comparative luxury when put up against most of the people out there- namely, Drift. He was sat on a veritable goldmine of tradable goods, and seemed determined not to leave, even if that meant living in a shack that had already been in bad condition in the pre-war days. He had a bed, a toilet, and a radio set-up, and that was all that he claimed to need.

Like Prowl, Drift was something of an enigma. Drift had lived a life of crime before the war, but that was about all that he would let on about himself, beyond that he originally came from Japan. His accent still hadn’t completely faded after all of these years, though you would, again, be hard pressed to find someone who knew what Japan  _ was _ . It lead to less discrimination in the post-war world, at least, and allowed Drift to live the life that he hadn’t been able to before. He and Rod were kindred spirits like that, both sporting bleached hair and wild outfits; in Rod’s case, a greasy ‘prairie boy who tried to make it big and failed miserably look’, in Drift’s, a platinum-haired cyberpunk ronin look.

“I read you loud and clear. No disturbance on my end, over.”

“Ten-four, my 20 is still at the shack. We’re having some bad weather out here, my signal got knocked over...Is Rod there? I need to ask him something, over.”

Prowl turned to Rod. There was a hint of something in his eyes, and though Rod couldn’t quite put a name to  _ what _ it was, he knew that he didn’t like it. Prowl turned back to his equipment, before replying to Drift,

“Negative, but I can take a message. He’s sleeping in, over.”

“Son of a bitch, let me talk to him!”

The radio crackled back to life almost immediately, and Prowl had to physically push Rod away from the receiver.

“Oh, uh, roger that. I’ll need to hear back soon about if we’re still meeting up on 261. I don’t have a freezer for this meat, let me know if he can come soon, alright? Over.”

“Roger that. I don’t think that Rod can make it-”

“Yes- I-” Rod grappled with Prowl for the receiver, before finally getting it in his grasp. “-Can! I can be over before then!”

“ _ -Off of me! _ ” Prowl shoved Rod back, but he had already gotten what he wanted. Prowl sighed, then grabbed the receiver back, finding little resistance this time. “We’re  _ discussing it _ , Drift. Over and out.”

The radio was silent, apparently obeying Prowl’s ‘out’ command. Rod panted as he leaned back against the wall, and Prowl had made a deliberate effort to straighten himself back up in his chair- and, evidently, to hide how out of breath he was, as well. He was all about appearances, even if they meant functionally nothing to anyone else but him. The illusion of control was sometimes even better than actually  _ having _ the control.

“I know what you’re about to say, and I’m going. We already decided on that.”

Prowl still refused to make eye contact with Rod, instead going back to his work of scanning local radio frequencies for chatter. He plugged in his oversized headphones and went to work, but they both knew that Prowl could still hear Rod, and vice versa.

“Yes, we had decided on that. I haven't forgotten. But I also haven't forgotten that we agreed to this  _ before _ -”

“Don’t say it!”

Finally, Prowl made eye contact, in the form of a quizzical, raised-eyebrow look over his shoulder. Maybe Rod had finally managed to catch him by surprise, the outburst being more spirited than Prowl had anticipated. Feeling Prowl’s gaze burning against him, Rod crossed his arms, and deliberately jammed them as far into his scrappy coat as they could go. Prowl’s eyes were locked on his face, but he knew, somehow, that Prowl was still trying to scan Rod’s prostheses as much as he could.

“Fine, then,” Prowl turned his gaze back to his work. “If you think you’re ready, talk to a medic again. I want your prostheses inspected and a verbal report delivered to my desk before I let you leave this bunker again.”

It was a fresh wound, in more ways than one. The place where metal met dark tan flesh was still sore, often reddened, too, from lack of attentive care. It was less than Rod didn’t care, so much that he  _ couldn’t _ care- acknowledging that he had lost his arms, even if he had been fitted with replacements, was still too much for him to handle. There was no concept of mental health in the aftermath of structured society, and so he had suffered alone, changing out the bandages around his biceps whenever they got too unbearable, or whenever he was forced to. The ‘phantom pains’ still hadn’t stopped, and the resident shelter medic hadn’t indicated that they ever  _ would _ . 

It was idiotic. Plain and simple, there was no other word for it, besides maybe ‘unfair’. An accident in defense of the shelter, ultimately for nothing as the attackers were taken care of by someone else- and, subsequently, all of the attention and praise had been lavished onto  _ them _ , and not Rod- had crippled him for life, as he still struggled with basic tasks dozens of days on.

Rod stormed off, back down the ladders that led him to his bed. In some forgotten world, the day was September 10th, which gave him just under a week to get himself out of his ‘mood’ and into a good enough mood that he could travel again. He could hold a gun for show, and in the area that stretched from their shelter to Drift’s shack, that was all that he needed; he didn’t need to  _ actually _ shoot anyone, or even have bullets with him, so long as he could talk a big game. In the still-deserted lower floor, Rod punched the wall above his favorite bunk, but the frustration of not being able to feel it only seemed to rub salt in his wound.

“You left something on the stove, dickhead.”

No sooner than he had flopped face down onto the bed, did Dipstick’s charming voice call out behind him. He didn’t have time to react, though, as two lukewarm deer steaks were tossed onto Rod’s bedside. He didn’t have the energy for outrage, whether emotional or physical, though he did wait until he heard Dipstick saunter off before rolling back over to eat.

The apocalypse had taken so much from him that it almost seemed comical to pout over  _ this _ , of all things. He had two working arms, better than any prostheses that pre-war people could’ve made, and yet he found himself moping over not being able to feel the burn of warm meat against his fingers, or the juices that dripped against of them, or his cracked and capped teeth as he bit into them futilely. They never broke, nor did they bend- though, he wished he could say the same about his teeth. Recoiling, Rod spat a chunk of splintered tooth to the floor, before wiping the resulting trail of spittle off of his face.

As Dipstick climbed into the bed above Rod with his own dinner, he was decidedly quiet. There was no way that ‘Mr. Still Living Like Rules Mean Literally Anything Anymore’  _ didn’t _ see Rod making a mess of himself, much less the specifics of how. They could butt heads, but it was little moments like that that made him appreciate what he had now, rather than what he had lost. Rod wiped meat juices onto the bedspread beside him, before turning in for bed, himself, and the thoughts that chased him into sleep were all focused on one thing:

What he was going to reclaim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll get into this more, later, but Rod is meant to be read as Oglala Lakota. I'll remove this note once I explicitly mention his ethnicity, but I wanted readers to know, now.


End file.
